The EPA Assault On Texas

The necessary precondition for Texas’s unique economic success – a beacon in a deep recession – is energy.

Source: Hot Air Green Room | Jun 19, 2011

The necessary precondition for Texas’s unique economic success – a beacon in a deep recession – is energy. And, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is closing in for the kill.

This would be one thing if Texas were an outlier among the 50 states in terms of dirty air or an otherwise demonstrably imperiled environment. But, the truth is closer to the opposite: the air in Texas has been getting cleaner; in the urban areas, much cleaner.

And, in spite of being by far the largest electric power producer of the 50 states, and heavily reliant on coal, Texas has been steadily reducing its emissions of the EPA’s least-favored compounds from coal combustion.

But, the EPA isn’t really making the argument that Texas is an environmental pigsty. It’s not putting any data or findings behind that premise, at any rate. Instead, it is simply acting high-handedly, assuming an authority that nothing in written law confers on it, to pronounce Texas’s procedures in violation of EPA rules – even when there is no basis for making that claim. To put it bluntly, the EPA is making a power grab.